Week 8

This week I've decided to sit and write a proper blog post instead of telling you the things that you mostly already know.

This week has been just like many of the last, quick, challenging and full of a lot of laughs and a few cries. I find that most of my weeks go this way but I am a teenage girl and my emotions are frankly a mess. 

I have found recently that I like being in class I just don't particularly like being lonely in class. This being said I have found that these past few weeks I have done a lot more work than what I would usually do and I definitely am not complaining about that. In class on Monday I was sat all on my own and granted if I had a lot more work to do I would've got it done but seems as I didn't I did spend a portion of the lesson watching Netflix, this was of course after I had finished editing and doing all my work for other classes like Phil had asked me to. I didn't mind being lonely too much though as I knew that at the end of the day I was going to be able to see my boyfriend, Harry. 

Due to me being blessed with the best luck in the world I did not get to see him at the weekend because I got a stomach bug, even though I tried everything to make sure I was not going to catch the bug off my sister (this included washing my hands around every five minutes and attempting to not breathe the same air as her.) That, of course, didn't at all matter in the end and I had to see him Monday and Tuesday. On Tuesday I went to see Trolls at the cinema with Harry and it was the most adorable film I had ever seen and definitely gave me a pick me up. I really wanted to also get my radio package for Rob done in this day but seems as Harry refuses to drive on dual carriageways or motorways I wasn't able to get to Wollaton Hall to record my piece. 

I began Wednesday by stressing about not having my radio package done and therefore snapping at everyone who even breathed around me. Wednesday's session with Mark was yet again filled with me thinking up things to do as I had finished my coursework, I can't fully remember what I was doing but I think it was productive? In photography, we got to research different types of editorial photography and analyze them, which was fun I suppose, I just would've liked taking some actual photos better. After this, I then went home as Rob told us not to attend if we hadn't got the work done and also I just had a really big headache and wanted to get home before 8pm.

On Thursday, we finally found out that Meryl was no longer attending the course which meant we could get things done and contribute our own ideas without being bossed around. This was great as we got to come up with an idea everyone liked. I felt a lot more enthusiastic about the project after that and got to work on finding music for it. 

On Friday I woke up 30 minutes before I had to leave my house which was a nightmare, have never gotten out of bed and dressed so quickly in my life. When I finally made it to college I checked my emails to find that yet again Yazmin had not emailed me about meeting for a talk, this is really starting to upset me as I opened up about how I was feeling to people at the college and the person they suggested to help me hasn't yet made the effort to contact me. After this I worked on an idea for the Nottingham young creative awards, I think I'm going to go down the line of making a political statement about Donald Trump being elected President of the USA and how that is going to effect every minorities future. I believe setting it in an almost post-apocalyptic world will create the best effect. In Phils lesson we continued to conduct research and gathered it together in a powerpoint, after this we focussed on pitching and the techniques we would need for this.

I've had an alright week, lets see what the next one holds. 

Week 7

This week has been a very tiring one as the winter months are rolling in which just means that I want to sleep for as long as possible and not leave my warm and cozy bed, this is not good when I have college to attend. However, I have motivated myself enough to still get out of bed and learn.

On the first day back we got to focus on our actual interviews and I finally set a date for when I would be conducting mine. As I had done everything else, however, this lesson dragged quite a bit as I couldn't find anything to do.

On Tuesday I had to get up very early to travel all the way to Nottingham and get my filming equipment so that I could interview my friend. This was strange as the camera was in a large black box and I'm pretty sure many people thought that I was carrying around a bomb. Conducting the interview was very fun and because it was with my friend I learned a lot more about him than I already knew.

On Wednesday I started to edit my interview, I had played around with Adobe premier before but, as it was quite a while ago now I had forgotten some things and so had to learn how to do these again. This process was very difficult as I have a lot of footage and the final cut can only be around 3 minutes long. In photography, we began looking at the content that we will be using to write our essays and we looked at the techniques used to develop old photos. In the final lesson with Rob, I figured out what I was going to do for my radio package and did some research on this.

Unfortunately, on Thursday I wasn't able to attend college as I had a terrible nights sleep because I was helping my mum looking after my ill little sister. However, I was sure to do as much work as possible whilst at home.

On Friday I continued to edit my interview and got a rough first cut of it done. With Phil, we continued to work in our magazine groups and gather together all the research that we had done individually so that we knew exactly what we had done. Then we moved on to thinking about how much it would cost to create our magazine and pay people to write our articles.

Week 6

At the beginning of the week with Mark, we continued to present our powerpoints and complete our assignments. I had not presented my powerpoint yet and thanks to my brilliant blog post last week I only had to present it in front of a few people! I also finished all of my assignment work in this lesson which was very good as I didn't want to have to do any work on Tuesday when it was my birthday.

In my first lesson with Mark on Wednesday, I sat and ate my lunch and cake that I had bought in with Kelly as I had nothing else to do which was very fun and nice because I didn't have anything to stress about. In the second lesson of the day, which should have been with Mark Epton but was in fact with some other guy that I can't remember the name of. In this lesson, I sat in the library and tried to find some books that I could use in my second assignment which is a written essay on two types of photography with book based references. (so basically exactly what we had just done in our first assignment but not in leaflet form and not using the internet.) Finally, in the third lesson of the day with Rob we (you guessed it!) worked on our internet acronyms worksheet.It was EXTREMELY fun and I just can't wait for the lesson again next week.

On Thursday with Sarah, we voiced our proposal in a focus group and got more ideas from the group. After that, we worked on our pre-production paperwork. I must admit I didn't get the most amount of work done that lesson as I was feeling a little bit down and drained as it hasn't been the best week for me. But I will be back better than ever after the half term ready to learn again.

On Friday we got to meet Sasha properly and then we did some stuff with her as Mark was very ill bless him. In the two lessons with Phil, we got into our magazine groups and conducted some primary research and began to think of a name for our magazine to go with our pitch.

I'm very happy to have half term and to be able to fully relax for a whole week.

Week 5

We began this week with Mark, in this lesson we continued with our assignments that are due for next week, and we also began presenting our powerpoint. Although I had completed mine I'm very shy and so will continue to not present it until I am forced to. Everyone's powerpoint presentations were very interesting and detailed and they gave me more of an idea of what else I could include in mine before I have to present it.

On Wednesday in the first lesson, we continued to work on and present our powerpoints, this again gave me more of an idea of extras that I could include into my own presentation. In the second lesson with Mark Epton we carried on with our assignments and creating our leaflets that are also due in next week, I was working very hard on my second leaflet as I wanted to finish it before next week as I don't want to do any work on Tuesday when it's my birthday. My second leaflet is based on underwater photography which is very interesting. In the final lesson with Rob, we continued on our internet acronyms worksheet which was BRILLIANT (note the sarcasm) and I have yet to even finish half of the sheet as it's so boring. We then spoke about creating a radio report for our website which is a lot more interesting.

On Thursday with Sarah, we focused on camera shots and angles. We took out the video cameras to practice this and I found this helped me to become even more familiar with the software and technology that I was using which is very helpful for the near future when I am producing and creating my own documentary for the assignment set. After this, we focused on completing our proposal for the documentary that we will be creating. As we are now working in a team there were times where the ideas of each of us would clash and there would be a small debate but these were easily resolved as members of the group compromised.

In our lesson with Phil, we started to look at our first assignment which is based around creating our own magazines of a genre of our choosing. We will be doing this in groups and I'm very excited about it as I get write about films. I want to be a film journalist so I love being able to get hands-on with the style of writing and production of the magazine. This is definitely an assignment that I will be very happy to do.

Overall I believe I have settled in well in the college and I cannot believe that half term is just around the corner.  

Week 4

With Mark on Monday, we continued to work on our interview pieces and I finally found a subject to interview so I was arranging the research and pre-production documents that I would need whilst also contacting my subject and asking them if they would be up for the interview. I feel that these two lessons really furthered my assignment as I was finally able to proceed onto the second and third parts of the task. I also continued doing this work in the industry skills session with Mark on Wednesday. I like that mark is now letting us get on with our work a bit more as I felt before I was falling behind because I didn't quite know what something in the assignment meant but now i can just ask if there are any problems.

In the second lesson on Wednesday, we got to go to Nottingham castle and practice our depth of field photography on the different historical figures around it. My favourite thing to photograph was the cursed ship in the oldest pub in England. Everyone seemed to think that they couldn't get a decent photo of the ship because it was cursed, but really all they needed to do was to turn up their ISO on the cameras so that more light could be let in. In the last lesson of the day with Rob, we continued to work on the internet acronyms worksheet which I still found very confusing.

On Thursday with Sarah, we started thinking about what our production groups were going to create for our human interest assignment. In the end, we decided that we would focus on Mental health in adolescents and more specifically how female contraception pills can affect that. We chose this subject as we found that every member of the group related to the subject. In this lesson, we were let free to do our own thing and just research I thought this was a good route to go down as it let our creative juices flow.

Finally, we ended the week with Phil who began to explain the assignment that we would be doing for him and we began looking at how media represents different groups of people and the ways they do that. This was a helpful lesson as it made me actively think about what I was saying and whether I would be putting the correct message across for the intentions that I had in the first place. It also gave me more skills for the articles that I would be writing in the future.

This week I have found that I haven't taken as many notes as I would usually, so next week I will be actively setting out to write more notes down. I feel this helps me the remember things more clearly.

Week 3

In our lesson with Mark on Monday we continued to delve deeper into the interview techniques we need in order to create a good assignment and be a good interviewer in future job roles. We learnt about the top 13 rules that his friend, a journalist, has always stuck to and these tips helped me when analysing the interviews for my assignment. We also learnt about conducting our own interviews and what to think about when writing and asking questions.

On Wednesday I began the day by twisting my ankle and badly spraining it but I powered through and headed off to college with a strong pain in my left leg. We once again began a lesson with Mark on industry skills, I was unable to fully attend this lesson however as I needed to help Kelly with a problem she was facing and has now thankfully resolved thanks to the help of not only Mark and Phil but me and my boyfriend Harry and everyone else who gave kelly any advice. I then continued the rest of the day with my photography lesson with Mark Epton who seemed a little annoyed at mine and kelly's late appearance but it was nothing that we could help. In the photography lesson, we focused on aperture and practised this through taking photos of chess pieces and changing the F-stop on the camera. Finally, on Wednesday we had a lesson with Rob where we got to learn about the great joy of internet acronyms and just how useful they were (really not much use at all in my opinion) and it once again made me wonder why I was staying until 5:30 on a Wednesday to learn about what seems to be completely pointless content.

As I woke up at 5:30 in the morning Thursday I rolled out of my bed and looked at myself in my mirror as I do every day and noticed something slightly different about my face, it was extremely swollen and I could only describe it as looking like a hamster or a marshmallow after showing my mum she sent me back to bed and later that day when I went to the doctors I was kindly told that I had a mild case of the mumps and couldn't attend college until it had cleared because its a dangerous and contagious illness. Most people would be thrilled by this news but I was extremely annoyed I couldn't attend college for the rest of the week and so for the whole of Thursday and Friday sat in my bedroom with a very sore throat and swollen hamster face instead of learning at college.

A pretty crazy week if you ask me.

Week 2

We began the week with Mark Dixon on Monday. After this we began to cover the pillars of good journalism and learnt that in some way everyone is bias so we must follow the pillars in order to not be objective. After this we began to learn how to conduct an effective interview for our first assignment, and started to going through the tasks on our assignment lists including finding inspirational interviewees and assessing 3 different professional interviews.

On Wednesday we began with an industry skills session with Mark Dixon. We ran through the 12 news values and their meaning according to the creators.This gave me an idea of what was actually meant by the values and how they can be interpreted. In the second session with Mark Epton we began to cover the basis of our assignment and began to cover the different shots used on a camera and practiced these out and about. In our final session of the day with Rob we thought about what the internet was and watched a really long boring video that almost sent me to sleep and then watched another video about the history of the internet and filled out a worksheet that was pretty pointless and then we went home. Even though the end of the day bored me to death I did come out with some pretty good looking photos from the photography session.

On Thursday with Sarah we learnt how to set up a video camera and then hit the streets to film our own version of a news story. This was very fun and helped me to feel creative and helped me to get familiar with the equipment. Sarah was very helpful and showed us all the things not to do and how to frame a shot so that it was appealing. I found I got the hang of filming very easily. Although I did feel a little lost because Kelly was ill and I had to make new friends which I'm not the best at sometimes.

On Friday we first started off with a tutorial with Mark Dixon where we thought about our aspirations. This helped me to really think about what I wanted to do in the future and be ambitious. In the last two lessons with Phil we looked at different types of research that journalists can use and looked at examples of this. After that we began to look at charts of information that interested us and began to think about creating an article based on that information.

Overall the second week has been tiring because of having to get up so early to catch the bus rather than the train that I used the week before but enjoyable as I have been learning even more new wonderful things and finding out I'm good at things I never knew I was.

Aspirations

What do you want to study on the course?
I want to learn every single thing possible so that I have a wide skill-set. I want to learn both how to operate behind the scenes and on the scenes. Whilst learning the key values of journalism.

What sort of journalism interests you?
I am very interested in film and performing arts journalism as I have grown up around those sort of things. However I would also like to do journalism based on social issues such as racism, sexism and homelessness to name a few. Fashion is also a subject that interests me and I would like to cover this. I would either like to be a written journalist or a photo journalist.

What do you want to do after the course?
After the course I would like to go into an apprenticeship or internship. I'd like to do this as I don't believe university is my thing as I like to be hands on in the environment and learn as I go. I also hate exams.

Where would you consider continuing studies?
The BBC or for a magazine that has a key interest in fashion or film.

What is your dream job?
My dream job is to be an entertainment journalist who interviews actors and film creators.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
I see myself as being an up and coming film critic or entertainment journalist. interviewing stars and watching films for a living.

Week 1

My first ever week at NCN has been something I have had to adjust to. It's so strange to come from such a formal style of education and enter a relaxed and more friendly environment. At college, I feel like I am treated as an adult as opposed to a child, it's nice, just strange.

Throughout the week I have learned many different things from skills of the workplace to how film production works. Everything has been so interesting and I don't believe there has been a second yet where I have been bored.

My first class of the week began on Monday morning with Mark Dixon, he is friendly and easy to listen to and really helped to ease me into the college lessons as he did not go straight into the deep end.

After Mark had spoken to us about the things that we would be doing once more Phil took over and began to explain to us what we would be doing with him, writing an article on two artists that are showcasing their pieces in a local gallery. He was very descriptive and easy to understand. I was excited to start researching and writing my first article, even if art isn't my thing. I also liked the way Phil broke down how we could cover every basis in an article by following the simple steps of "Who,What,Where,When,Why,How" this made it very clear what I could research along with the back stories of the artists.

On Wednesday morning, we were again being taught by Mark, this time, we're learning about the skills of the journalism industry. In this lesson, we mainly focused on selecting and constructing news. This concept was quite complicated to me however I definitely got the main idea that the news can be very biased and only selects the stories they want to tell and will ignore many if they believe them to be "too complexed" for laymen like you and me. I also understood you have to be very flexible with where you find your information, as it can vary from coffee shop gossip to it being supplied by big world agencies. In addition, I found out about the news values that were created in 1965 by Johan Galtang and Marie Holmbe Ruge which helped me to understand how times have changed since the 60's. Overall this lesson was very informative and I liked it a lot.

After Mark Dixon taught us we went on to learn about photojournalism with Mark Epton. I loved this lesson and photography is one of my favourite things to do. Mark was also very kind and friendly and made me, and I'm sure the rest of the class, feel very welcome. We began to learn the basics of DSLR cameras and take some practice shots. It was all very informative and interesting.

When it came to the next lesson with Rob he was teaching us how to create a website on a website creator called Wix, it seemed simple enough but I did struggle in places. I found Rob lacked knowledge of some of the things he was teaching which frustrated me slightly as I didn't know what I was doing and couldn't get any help either as when I did ask he was unsure and I had to try and figure it out which I couldn't do. I understand though that the software had changed overnight and he was unable to know everything and after a lot of guessing and googling and clicking help buttons I was able to figure out what I needed to do to create my website.


On Thursday we had a lesson with Sarah. She began to explain to us the process of film production and how there are 5 key stages (development, pre-production, production, post-production, and distribution.) Sarah also explained to us what we would be doing for our first project, a short documentary on a human interest subject that could link to the future of Nottingham. She also began easing us into creatively and descriptively writing for the purpose of development for when we begin to write our scripts a little later down the line. Sarah was also a very clear and easy to understand teacher, she also made things light hearted and fun.

I began Friday with a set of tests called Gears, there were simple enough and gave me an idea of how much information of English and maths I have retained since leaving year 11. After this, we went on a visit to the Nottingham Contemporary with Phil for our first article on the artists that had exhibitions there. He gave us ideas on things to think about and ask in order to create a good article. The trip was very good and I got all the information I needed to create the article I wanted to write. In the next lesson with Phil we began to write up these articles and shared our ideas as a class, this helped me to think of the art in ways I hadn't before and re-assess what I was going to write.

Overall the first week of study was very informative and welcoming. I am excited to continue studying this course and cannot wait to find where it could take me in the future.